New Jeanland

I don’t like plenty of things. Some of them are popular. Some are critically acclaimed. Some are beloved by people whose taste I otherwise respect.

Occasionally, I dislike something so thoroughly that listening to other people praise it makes me wonder whether we experienced the same thing.

This used to be a fairly ordinary condition. You did not like something. You quietly avoided whatever it was and continued living.

Increasingly, that seems insufficient. It is no longer enough to dislike something. We need to explain why the thing is actually bad, why everyone else has been fooled into liking it, why its popularity reveals some larger cultural failure, or why enjoying it might itself be morally questionable.

Taste Does Not Need a Defense

There are legitimate reasons to criticize art, entertainment, products, trends, public figures, and cultural phenomena.

Criticism is useful. I enjoy criticism. I have no interest in a world where everyone politely pretends everything is equally good because taste is subjective.

Some things are badly made. Some deserve serious criticism. It can be enjoyable to pick someone else’s work apart with a fine-toothed comb. In the immortal words of Anton Ego:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

Anton Ego
Disney/Pixar’s “Ratatouille” (2007), written by Brad Bird.

But there is a difference between criticism and the strange compulsion to convert personal preference into objective judgment.

Sometimes, I don’t like the thing. That is the entire review. Personal taste is allowed to be arbitrary. We seem increasingly uncomfortable with that because arbitrary dislike gives us very little authority.

“I don’t like it” describes me.

“This is bad” describes the thing.

The second sounds much more important.

The Internet Rewards a Case Against Something

Social media does not particularly reward quiet indifference. Nobody needs a twelve-part thread explaining that you watched a television show, did not enjoy it very much, and consequently stopped watching. There is no conflict there. No stakes. No reason for strangers to gather.

Declare the show the worst thing television has ever produced and now we have something to discuss. Someone loves it. Someone hates it more than you do. Someone thinks you misunderstood it. Someone else thinks everyone who likes it has terrible taste.

Now, there are sides. The internet is very good at creating sides. A preference becomes an argument, the argument becomes an identity marker, and eventually people are defending a television program as though their ancestors fought to establish its constitutional legitimacy. This would merely be funny if we did not do the same thing with almost everything. Books. Music. Fashion. Food. Hobbies. Vacation destinations. Parenting styles. Interior design. Popular slang. Technology. Someone enjoying something you dislike becomes an invitation to explain why they should stop.

There is also money in hating things.

Negative reviews are entertaining. Rage gets attention. Mockery is easy to share. Entire online identities can be built around watching things you supposedly despise and explaining, repeatedly, how much you despise them.

At some point I begin to question the meaning of the word dislike.

If you watch every episode, follow every development, know every interview, monitor the fan community, discuss the subject daily, and have produced forty-seven videos about how unbearable it is, the thing has become one of your hobbies. You may hate it, but you have also developed an extremely committed relationship with it.

This is one of the stranger consequences of an attention economy: dislike can require more engagement than enjoyment. The person who likes something may watch it once and move on; the person who hates it makes a podcast with ten episodes dedicated to it.

You Don’t Have to Understand Why People Like It

There is a particular kind of disbelief that accompanies strong differences in taste.

“How can anyone like this? It’s so overrated.”

Usually, fairly easily. Their brain produces pleasure in response to something yours does not. Mystery solved.

We often treat taste differences as though they require a psychological explanation. If someone likes something we find embarrassing, shallow, ugly, boring, or stupid, we want to know what defect produced this outcome.

The reality is routinely underestimated.

Human preferences are wildly variable. People enjoy flavors I cannot tolerate, music that irritates me, hobbies I find incomprehensible, and movies I would require financial compensation to watch twice. Good for them. The world would be extraordinarily tedious if everyone arrived at the same conclusions about everything.

I have always found overrated an interesting accusation.

Sometimes, it means something useful. A work can receive enormous critical praise that someone believes exceeds its actual quality. Often, though, “overrated” seems to mean: “I have observed that many people like this considerably more than I do, and I find the discrepancy suspicious.”

Popularity itself becomes irritating.

It is no longer enough that you dislike the singer. You have to establish that she cannot really sing.

Perhaps… or perhaps thousands of people genuinely enjoy something you do not.

That possibility should not be as difficult to accept as it apparently is. Other people’s enjoyment does not invalidate your dislike. Your dislike does not require invalidating their enjoyment in return.

The stranger development is how often aesthetic preferences become moral judgments.

It is then no longer enough that you dislike the singer or that you have to establish that she cannot really sing. It’s that you have to establish that she is morally problematic.

It is one thing to think something is annoying; it is another to construct an argument that the thing you find annoying is actually harmful. Sometimes it is harmful, obviously. Art and entertainment can contain ugly ideas. Industries can exploit people. Trends can have genuine social consequences. Criticism does not become illegitimate merely because morality is involved.

Moral language is powerful, which makes it tempting.

“I don’t enjoy this” is weak.

“This is problematic” has authority.

Now your preference is not merely your preference. It has ethical weight.

Once something becomes morally suspect, the people who enjoy it become suspect too. You do not merely like a stupid movie; your enjoyment of the stupid movie reveals something. Perhaps you failed to interrogate its underlying assumptions. Perhaps your taste reinforces harmful cultural norms. Perhaps your willingness to enjoy it despite its flaws indicates insufficient concern about whatever issue has been attached to it.

Eventually, leisure starts requiring ideological due diligence.

Sometimes a stupid movie is just a stupid movie. You are allowed to enjoy it. I am allowed to think it is terrible. Neither of us necessarily needs a theory.

You Are Also Allowed to Hate It, but Indifference Is an Underrated Skill

I should clarify something before this becomes an argument for compulsory politeness.

You are allowed to hate things. Vigorously. Sometimes hating something is fun. There is pleasure in leaving a terrible movie with a friend and spending the next hour explaining everything wrong with it. Bad books can produce excellent conversations. Mocking an absurd trend with someone who shares your irritation is one of life’s minor joys. I am not advocating for a world in which every opinion must be softened into “It wasn’t really for me.” Sometimes it was awful. Say so.

The problem is not expressing dislike. It is the inability to leave dislike at the level of dislike.

You do not always need to persuade.

You do not always need to diagnose the people who disagree. You do not always need your preference validated by proving that everyone else’s preference is inferior. And you certainly do not need to spend six months following something you hate because you have developed an audience that enjoys watching you hate it.

The internet has made indifference surprisingly difficult.

Algorithms do not particularly care whether you engage with something because you love it or because you are furious about it.

You watched. You commented. You shared. You returned tomorrow to see what happened next. From the platform’s perspective, the relationship is going beautifully.

This creates an odd situation in which people complain constantly that they are being shown content they hate while repeatedly demonstrating an intense willingness to interact with it.

There is another option: You can leave. Mute the account. Stop watching the show. Do not buy the book. Scroll past the video. Allow the celebrity you cannot stand to continue existing somewhere beyond the borders of your attention.

Not everything irritating requires engagement. There is an enormous amount of peace available in deciding that something is stupid and then never thinking about it again.

Other People’s Taste Is Not a Threat to Yours

I think some of the compulsion to argue about taste comes from treating consensus as validation. If everyone agrees that the thing you love is excellent, your enjoyment feels justified. If everyone agrees that the thing you hate is terrible, your judgment feels vindicated.

But taste does not require a jury. There is no prize for assembling the objectively correct collection of preferences before you die.

This is particularly worth remembering when someone loves something you hate. Their enjoyment is not an argument against your judgment. You do not have to correct them.

They are not having fun incorrectly.

Bring Back Ordinary Dislike

I would like to restore the humble negative opinion.

No manifesto, moral emergency, psychological diagnosis of the fan base, or six-month campaign demanding that everyone acknowledge the thing is overrated. Taste has always contained an element of irrationality. That is part of what makes it taste rather than measurement.

Criticism has its place. Arguments about art and culture can be interesting, funny, insightful, and occasionally important.

Not every preference needs to become a position. You are allowed to encounter something popular, conclude that it is absolutely not for you, and leave everyone else to enjoy it in peace.